Foundation's Fear - Gregory Benford

With the permission - and blessing - of the Asimov estate, three of today's bestselling SF writers, Gregory Benford, Greg Bear, and David Brin, have conspired (like the original Foundation!) to complete the epic saga the beloved Grand Master left unfinished. The Second Foundation Trilogy begins with Gregory Benford's Foundation's Fear, a voyage to the very beginnings of the enterprise itself and of its mysterious founder. Hari Seldon wanted nothing more than to be a mathist, absorbed in the cool precision of numbers. But fate - and a cruel Emperor's arbitrary power - thrust him into the First Ministership of the Empire against his will. As the story opens, Hari is about to leave his quiet professorship and take on the all but impossible task of governing twenty-five million inhabited worlds from the all-steel planet of Trantor. With the help of his beautiful bio-engineered "wife" Dors and his protege Yugo, Seldon is still developing the science that will transform history, never dreaming that it will ultimately put him against future history's most awesome threat.